| |
| WHEN, lov’d by poet and painter, | |
| The sunrise fills the sky, | |
| When night’s gold urns grow fainter, | |
| And in depths of amber die— | |
| When the morn-breeze stirs the curtain, | 5 |
| Bearing an odorous freight— | |
| Then visions strange, uncertain, | |
| Pour thick through the Ivory Gate. | |
| |
| Then the oars of Ithaca dip so | |
| Silently into the sea | 10 |
| That they wake not sad Calypso, | |
| And the Hero wanders free: | |
| He breasts the ocean-furrows, | |
| At war with the words of Fate, | |
| And the blue tide’s low susurrus | 15 |
| Comes up to the Ivory Gate. | |
| |
| Or, clad in the hide of leopard, | |
| ’Mid Ida’s freshest dews, | |
| Paris, the Teucrian shepherd, | |
| His sweet Oenone wooes: | 20 |
| On the thought of her coming bridal | |
| Unutter’d joy doth wait, | |
| While the tune of the false one’s idyl | |
| Rings soft through the Ivory Gate. | |
| |
| Or down from green Helvellyn | 25 |
| The roar of streams I hear, | |
| And the lazy sail is swelling | |
| To the winds of Windermere: | |
| That girl with the rustic bodice | |
| ’Mid the ferry’s laughing freight | 30 |
| Is as fair as any goddess | |
| Who sweeps through the Ivory Gate. | |
| |
| Ah, the vision of dawn is leisure— | |
| But the truth of day is toil; | |
| And we pass from dreams of pleasure | 35 |
| To the world’s unstay’d turmoil. | |
| Perchance, beyond the river | |
| Which guards the realms of Fate, | |
| Our spirits may dwell forever | |
| ’Mong dreams of the Ivory Gate. | 40 |
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